Long before Zapier hired me to write for them, I was already a power user. I loved tinkering with automations and watching tasks take care of themselves.
But as much as I leaned on those workflows, I always wished they could not only do work for me but make decisions along the way. For example, what if an automation could tell the difference between an email that needed a reply and one that didn't? Or decide the best time to schedule a task without me setting fixed rules?
So when AI agents entered the scene, Christmas came early in my house (or at least my home office). Suddenly, an AI agent could analyze context, weigh options, and act dynamically, all while still plugging into the same apps and powerful automated workflows I already relied on.
That shift—moving from rules-based automation to intelligent orchestration—is what makes AI agents so exciting for business. In this article, I'll break down what AI agents are and what they can do. Then, I'll share role-specific examples you can use as inspiration to start experimenting in your own organization.
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What is an AI agent?
At its simplest, an AI agent is software that can take in information, make decisions, and act on your behalf. Instead of waiting for you to tell it exactly what to do (like a chatbot does), an AI agent has some level of autonomy. You give it a goal, and it figures out the steps to get there.
Zapier customer Edward Tull, VP of Technology at JBGoodwin REALTORS, says it best:
Agents are like having a highly skilled team working behind the scenes—creating, refining, and enriching everything from our content to the data we already have.
Edward Tull, VP of Technology
Of course, "autonomy" doesn't mean you set it loose without oversight. Good AI agents are bound by rules and connected to the right systems, so they know both what they can do and what they should do. That balance is what makes them practical for business automation: they're smart enough to handle complexity, but structured enough to avoid going rogue.
Learn more about how to set up an AI agent the right way.
AI agents vs. chatbots
It's easy to confuse AI agents with chatbots because both involve AI and both can interact with people. But the difference comes down to scope.
A chatbot is conversational. It can answer questions and complete simple tasks. An AI agent, on the other hand, is more like an assistant who not only answers your questions but also takes initiative. Instead of just saying, "Your shipment is delayed," it can reschedule the delivery, update the CRM, and email the customer an apology—without you needing to string those steps together.
In other words:
Chatbots are reactive and conversation-based.
AI agents are proactive, broad, and task-based.
The two aren't competitors—they complement each other. You might still want a chatbot to greet visitors on your website while agents quietly handle the messy, multi-step work behind the scenes.
AI agent ideas for administrative tasks
Shifting every task from "do the task" to "build the system to handle the task automatically."
— claire vo 🖤 (@clairevo) June 3, 2025
Most recent example? @zapier agent to my incoming emails, categorize, and auto draft a reply.
IZAAS (inbox zero as a service)
Admin work often shows up in the form of small, constant interruptions—an email that needs a quick reply, a Slack message that turns into a to-do, or a meeting request you forgot to block time for. None of these tasks are huge on their own, but together they chip away at focus and drain your team's energy. AI agents can help by quietly picking up those chores and giving you back the space to work on things that actually move the needle.
Take email triage, for example. Instead of spending the first 30 minutes of your morning combing through your inbox, an agent can act as a gatekeeper. It reviews each new message, archives the noise, drafts replies when needed, and flags only the tricky ones for you to weigh in on. You end up with a much cleaner inbox and fewer "oops, missed that" moments.
Scheduling is another place agents shine. Picture an agent that scans your emails, recognizes when someone is asking for a meeting, and automatically creates the calendar event with the right details and participants. No more copying and pasting from email threads and no more double-booking. Your calendar stays updated in the background without you constantly managing it.
Organization doesn't stop at scheduling. Agents can also help you keep your inbox structured by categorizing emails into labels with explanations for why they landed there. That way, when you go hunting for all invoices or vendor communications, you're not stuck scrolling.
With agents, Slack can even become more manageable. Imagine reacting with an emoji to a message and having an agent turn that thread into a scheduled task—complete with context, estimated effort, and a reserved block of focus time. Suddenly, your chat tool becomes less of a distraction and more of a productivity pipeline.
AI agent ideas for sales
Sales teams thrive on momentum, but a lot of the work that fuels pipeline growth is labor-intensive: researching leads, logging updates, and chasing follow-ups. Done manually, those tasks slow reps down and eat into the time they could be spending actually talking to customers. AI agents can help by enriching data intelligently in the background and keeping opportunities moving forward.
Take lead research, for example. Instead of manually Googling a prospect to find their role, company size, or recent funding news, an enrichment agent can do the digging for you and log those details into your CRM. That means reps jump into conversations already equipped with context, rather than wasting cycles gathering it.
Similarly, agents can track industry-specific press releases or company news wires each day and automatically surface new opportunities, so your team is always working with fresh leads.
Agents can also help with qualification—the step that ensures your reps spend their time on the right prospects. An enterprise lead qualification agent can evaluate inbound form submissions in HubSpot, check them against your criteria, and alert the team when a high-potential lead comes in. No more waiting for someone to manually review forms; the best opportunities get flagged instantly.
Even after you've landed a meeting, agents can continue to add value. A sales call analysis agent can transcribe recordings and evaluate them against a framework, capturing key moments and competitor mentions.
Then, a follow-up assistant can draft an email based on the transcript, turning the conversation into a clear next step while it's still fresh.
AI agent ideas for marketing
Marketing is equal parts creativity and consistency. You need big ideas that stand out, but you also need the discipline to do things like check copy against brand rules, schedule posts, and run SEO audits. AI agents can help your team stay on brand and on schedule, even as your business scales.
For example, instead of relying on someone to manually review every new piece of content, an agent can scan Google Docs for adherence to brand guidelines and flag issues directly in Slack. The writer still has ownership of the creative work, but the agent acts as a second set of eyes to keep everything polished and consistent.
On the distribution side, agents can help lighten the load of social media. A posting agent can optimize copy and schedule posts across LinkedIn and Instagram based on what's likely to get the most engagement.
And for more experimental efforts, a viral content agent can research current trends, draft scripts, and compile everything into a document for review—so your team can move quickly when the timing's right without scrambling to start from scratch.
An SEO analysis agent can also regularly rate your website against best practices and flag issues. Instead of waiting for a quarterly audit, you get a rolling feedback loop that makes it easier to catch problems early and keep your site in good shape.
AI agent ideas for support
Customer support is all about speed and consistency—two things that get harder as ticket volume grows. Agents can help by handling the repeatable parts of support, giving customers faster answers while freeing up your team to focus on the tricky, high-value interactions that really need a human touch.
For instance, you could use an agent in Slack that watches for common questions, pulls the right help doc, and posts an answer directly in the thread. If the conversation continues, it sticks around to monitor follow-ups and can flag the issue for escalation if things get complex. Instead of your support team dropping everything to answer every ping, the agent becomes the first line of response.
Agents can also step in outside of traditional ticketing channels. This one monitors your Google Business reviews. When a glowing 5-star review comes in, it generates a celebratory message to share with your team. When a frustrated customer leaves a 1-star review, it drafts a compliant, on-brand response using your company's policies, then sends it to Slack for context and approval. That way, your Google reviews get consistent responses that protect your reputation without leaving the work entirely on your team's plate.
Support agents aren't just reactive, either—they can surface insights that help you improve over time. One agent might analyze incoming tickets each week, highlight patterns, and email a digest or push the findings into a Notion doc for your team to review.
Another could run sentiment analysis across Zendesk conversations, then structure that feedback in a Google Doc so you can spot emerging issues before they turn into churn.
These aren't tasks you'd necessarily prioritize daily, but with an agent keeping watch, you get a clearer picture of customer health without adding to your team's workload.
AI agent ideas for HR
HR teams juggle a mix of people-focused moments and process-heavy tasks. The people side—things like building culture and connecting with employees—should always feel human. But the administrative side (tracking milestones, sorting resumes, analyzing surveys) often pulls time and attention away.
Some simple HR tasks can be solved with straightforward automations, but others are messier and require interpretation or decision-making. For those more complex administrative tasks, AI agents can step in and free up your time to focus on relationships.
Note: Depending on your location, there may be local laws that regulate the use of AI in employment decisions. Please make sure you review those before trying these and other AI workflows in your HR processes.
One example: keeping up with birthdays and work anniversaries. It's a small thing, but those moments go a long way toward employee engagement and morale. An agent can check your org spreadsheet each morning and post a Slack reminder when someone has a milestone coming up. Instead of scrambling at the last minute (or forgetting altogether), managers and teammates get a nudge to celebrate on time.
Agents can also help you keep a pulse on employee satisfaction. Instead of manually crunching survey data, an agent can analyze responses and share the results in a digestible format. This makes it easier to spot patterns—like dips in engagement after a big policy change—without waiting until the quarterly review cycle.
Recruiting is another area where agents shine. Screening resumes is necessary but time-consuming, especially at scale. An agent can filter resumes against your defined criteria and flag the ones worth a closer look.
You could even have an agent rank candidates by those factors, giving recruiters a prioritized shortlist to work from. Instead of spending hours skimming every application, the team can focus on meaningful conversations with the best-fit candidates.
AI agent ideas for IT
IT teams are often pulled in two directions: keeping systems running smoothly and handling an endless stream of requests. The challenge is that a lot of those requests are routine—things like policy checks or documenting a known issue—but they still eat into valuable time. AI agents can take on initial triage and other messy administrative work so IT pros can focus on more complex troubleshooting.
Compliance is a good example. Every organization has policies and regulations that need to be enforced, but reviewing each request manually can slow things down. A compliance review agent can evaluate incoming requests against your current policies, flagging the ones that meet requirements and surfacing exceptions that need human approval. Instead of every request becoming a ticket, the team can zero in on the edge cases.
Documentation is another perennial pain point for IT. Issues often get discussed and solved in Slack, but capturing those fixes for the knowledge base is the step that's easiest to skip.
With an agent in place, whenever someone adds a ✅ emoji to a Slack thread, it automatically pulls the conversation, organizes it into a clear solution, and updates the internal knowledge base. That way, solutions don't get buried in chat history—they're accessible for the next person who runs into the same problem.
AI agent ideas for product management
Product managers are at the center of a lot of moving parts—gathering customer feedback, turning it into requirements, syncing with engineering, and keeping stakeholders informed. The challenge is that much of this work involves documentation and communication, which, while essential, can eat into time you'd rather spend on strategy and discovery. AI agents can help by turning the raw inputs—customer calls, project updates, product specs—into the structured outputs PMs need every week.
For example, instead of starting from a blank page, you could use an agent to generate a Product Requirements Document (PRD) from a feature request or bug report.
Pair that with another agent that listens in on customer calls, summarizes key themes, and creates draft PRDs for potential new features—and suddenly the backlog feels a lot more connected to the voice of the customer. You still refine and prioritize, but the heavy lifting of documentation is handled.
Status updates are another area ripe for AI orchestration. A weekly update agent can scan project boards or team reports and draft a stakeholder email that highlights progress, risks, and next steps. Rather than chasing down updates and writing summaries from scratch, you get a clear draft you can polish and send, keeping stakeholders aligned with much less effort.
Even meetings can run more smoothly with the right support. A sync agenda agent can take a product spec, generate an agenda, and schedule the meeting with the right people. Instead of scrambling to organize conversations, you walk into meetings with structure already in place.
Put Zapier Agents to work in your business
AI agents are a practical way to reduce the busywork that slows teams down. And in turn, the more routine work you can offload, the more space your team has to focus on strategy and innovation.
Zapier is the most connected AI orchestration platform, integrating 8,000+ apps—so your agents can take action directly in the systems you already use. That means you can design sophisticated workflows where AI is just one piece of the puzzle, seamlessly combined with the rest of your tech stack.
The result is less time spent babysitting tasks and more time spent moving your business forward. With Zapier, you can take any of these agent ideas—support, marketing, HR, sales, product—and build them into orchestrated workflows tailored to your team.
It's not about automating everything. It's about automating the right things, so your people can focus where they have the most impact.
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